Villanelle over Spilled Milk
every evening the milk spills at dinner.
my puny hand grabs the plastic chalice, fails.
dad swings his fist down like a hammer.
We Don’t Call It a Riot
That summer was an oven on self-clean—
beyond hot. The cops raided clubs for weeks.
Huddled, frightened men and men and women
and women and human and human held
at the end of a nightstick in contempt,
being held in the arms of a lover
The Afterlife: In the Summer House
A scrap of canvas tacked to the kitchen wall
reads, in Russian and English:
AT THE DARK TIME
PULL OUT THE CORD.
Fuck the Carburetor
I was just out of high school.
Yes, I said, I am a bookkeeper,
when I’d had only one year of
numbers a few decimals short
of failure.
The Fire This Time
how much damn broke
does it take to want to
burn just before class
lung green with chaos
My 88-Year-Old Mother-in-Law Decides to Make New Year’s Resolutions
and I want to say, oh, Rose, why? but there’s no way to pass the prime
rib and pretend the words You’ll be dead soon enough aren’t standing
behind her, waiting to be said.